Time series regression studies have been widely used in environmental epidemiology, notably in investigating the short-term associations between exposures such as air pollution, weather variables or pollen, and health outcomes such as mortality, myocardial infarction or disease-specific hospital admissions. Typically, for both exposure and outcome, data are available at regular time intervals (...

Delirium is a serious and common acute neuropsychiatric syndrome that is associated with short- and long-term adverse health outcomes. However, relatively little delirium research has been conducted in unselected populations. Epidemiologic research in such populations has the potential to resolve several questions of clinical significance in delirium. Part 1 of this article explores the importa...

OVERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 STRUCTURE OF GENERAL FACTORIAL DESIGNS . . . . . . . . . . . 543 SUITABLE CONFOUNDING RULES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544 Design Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544 Block Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545 Gener...

Among clinical physicians it is the population study that is considered to be the "gold standard" of medical evidence concerning acceptable treatments. As new information comes to light concerning the many variables and confounding factors that can affect such studies, many older studies lose much of their original impact. While newer population studies take into consideration a far greater num...

When experimental designs are premature, impractical, or impossible, researchers must rely on statistical methods to adjust for potentially confounding effects. Such procedures, however, are quite fallible. We examine several errors that often follow the use of statistical adjustment. The first is inferring a factor is causal because it predicts an outcome even after "statistical control" for o...

Background. Patients afflicted with Alzheimer's disease (AD) exhibit a decrease in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentration of the 42 amino acid form of beta-amyloid (Abeta(42)). However, a high discrepancy between different centers in measured Abeta(42) levels reduces the utility of this biomarker as a diagnostic tool and in monitoring the effect of disease modifying drugs. Preanalytical an...

The yield response of various crops to salinity under field conditions is affected by soil processes and environmental conditions. The composition of dissolved ions depend on soil chemical processes such as cation or anion exchange, oxidation-reduction reactions, ion adsorption, chemical speciation, complex formation, mineral weathering, solubility, and precipitation. The nature of cations and ...

Confounding factors in radiation pulmonary carcinogenesis are passive and active cigarette smoke exposures and radiation hormesis. Significantly increased lung cancer risk from ionizing radiation at lung doses < 1 Gy is not observed in never smokers exposed to ionizing radiations. Residential radon is not a cause of lung cancer in never smokers and may protect against lung cancer in smokers. Th...

While the fMRI test-retest reliability has been mainly investigated from the point of view of group level studies, here we present analyses and results for single-subject test-retest reliability. One important aspect of group level reliability is that not only does it depend on between-session variance (test-retest), but also on between-subject variance. This has partly led to a debate regardin...